How to Make Enemies and Influence People

The Art of Breaking Elite Consensus

There is a generally accepted consensus that scientists want to advance science. After all, they’re called scientists! “Science” is literally in the name of their profession! Like most generally accepted schools of thought, I think that this one could use a little more examination. Historically speaking, how often have scientists had the best interests of science in mind? And how often have they instead twisted science to serve their own best interests?

During the golden age of Imperial China, the “scientists” of that time were astrologers. As funny as it may seem to us today, astrology was considered a very real science at that time, similar to economics. It required a great deal of mathematical training for astrologers to be able to correctly understand the formulas that were used to calculate the future from the alignment of the stars. Only the smartest students were capable of mastering this field. The most talented astrologers were even selected to join the Imperial Court, where their mathematical formulas would be used to help the emperor set governmental policy, similar to the way that economists help set governmental policy today. Plantings and harvestings and even military decisions were made in consultation with these learned and highly educated folk who were considered the scientists of their era. Of course, today we know that their entire field was just nonsense. The formulas they used to make their predictions may have required very advanced math skill, but they had no connection whatsoever to reality. They could not predict the future, no matter how capably they claimed that their theories and formulas made them able to do so. (Again, note the similarity to modern economics here.)

If you were to go back in time and offer those imperial astrologers proof that their theories were wrong, do you think they would accept it? How likely is it that these expert scientists would allow themselves to come to the consensus that their entire careers were a lie, and that the money, power, and high status that they held in society was completely undeserved? That the best and most altruistic thing that they could do for society was to stop advising the emperor, step down from the seat of power, and admit that their entire field was unscientific nonsense? I don’t think it’s very likely. A lot of scientists claim to have the best interests of science at heart, but they will be very quick to bury the truth if said truth-seeking ever threatens to erode their own wealth, prestige, and status.

During the 1800s, the top scientists of the day were phrenologists. Phrenologists were analogous to the sociologists of our time, in the sense that they studied human intelligence and social psychology. The central hypothesis of their science (I’m totally not kidding here) is that you could understand and map out a person’s intelligence and personality by analysing the shape of their head. This may seem crazy to you or I, but it’s important to realize that during that time phrenologists were considered highly skilled professionals, like sociologists today. Their “insights” were used to help treat many mental and physical ailments. And much like sociologists today, the “expertise” of those in this field was used to justify the governmental policies of the elite, such as the practice of slavery. It was clear to the phrenologists that the shape of African skulls in comparison to Anglo-Saxon skulls was indicative of lower intelligence, which thus justified slavery.

If you were to go back in time and offer those phrenologists proof that their theories were wrong and caused countless amounts of needless human suffering, do you think that they would accept your proof? That the leading experts would confer with each other and say “Well, it’s true that the alternative science being proposed seems a lot more effective than our own. Better admit we’re quacks and phonies, give up all our prestigious careers and money, and go die in poverty now. It’s sad that we have to give up our social standing and luxurious lifestyles, but it’s all for the good of science!” Of course they wouldn’t do that. As we’ve already discussed, the idea that scientists are primarily working in the best interests of science is naive and self-delusional. Scientists do whatever advances their own best interests, and while they may try to align their own best interests with the advancement of science, ultimately their own advancement comes first. This selfish behavior tends to slow down science dramatically, because whenever the consensus of scientific experts is wrong - as it has been many times in the past - the people who are supposed to be in charge of advancing human knowledge end up trying to fight the new scientific paradigm because it is personally inconvenient for them to admit that they were wrong. As a famous physicist once said, “Science advances one funeral at a time.” What this statement means is that great leaps forward in science don’t tend to happen because the experts admitted that they were wrong: these leaps happen because the experts die out, and the new generation of experts has less prestige and social status invested in the existing status quo, which makes it easier for them to acknowledge that the existing paradigm is flawed and update to a more advanced paradigm.

So, if we wanted to advance science faster, and initiate a scientific paradigm shift without waiting for the current generation of “experts” to die off, what might be the best way to implement such a change? Once again, I think that history may offer some useful guidance.

In the Middle Ages, the top scientists of their era were alchemists. Alchemy was a pseudoscience which (in theory) allowed the practitioner to make useful chemical formulas with the aid of magic, prayer, and spiritual beings. What made the alchemical paradigm distinct from our previous two examples is that it was quickly and efficiently replaced by chemistry, with very little skepticism or pushback from the elite consensus. What changed? What was different about chemistry that made it so effective at supplanting alchemy, whereas other sciences faced a lot of hostility and pushback from the dominant elite paradigm of that period?

The answer is gunpowder. The science of chemistry was able to be weaponized in a way that made its power undeniable. You see, when a scientific paradigm is determined by the “expert consensus,” that scientific paradigm is very subjective. It is very easy for experts to deny reality and facts if that reality and those facts would be embarrassing to them, and in fact that kind of behavior happens all the time - hence the reason that we have a severe replication crisis in sociology. However, it is very hard for experts to deny reality and facts when the castle that they live in is crumbling to pieces all around them, which tends to happen when your enemy has cannons and you don’t. Gunpowder eliminated the subjectivity of science, because the outcomes were very objective and undeniable. Either you had gunpowder, in which case you survived, or you didn’t have gunpowder, in which case your enemies conquered you. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb would say, the invention of gunpowder ensured that the existing elites suddenly had skin in the game. Regardless of how embarrassing it might have been for them to admit that their “expert consensus” was wrong, they didn’t have the option of denying the superiority of chemistry because failing to accept that reality would result in their civilization collapsing. No matter how arrogant an “expert” you may be, no matter how convinced you are that your ideas are the best and the upstarts challenging you are wrong, there is nothing less subjective and more undeniably real than a cannonball flying right through your wall.

The moral of the story is simple. If you develop a new science that is vastly superior to the one currently in vogue with the “expert consensus,” don’t even bother trying to convince the experts that you are right and they are wrong. The experts won’t ever willingly admit that their paradigm is wrong, because it would be deeply humiliating for them to admit that they got upstaged by a layman. Instead, weaponize your science and spread it freely. Then the experts will have no choice but to accept your paradigm’s superiority, because societies or groups that don’t accept the validity of the new science will be very quickly destroyed by natural selection. “Evolve or die” may sound like a cruel thing to say, but when presented with this stark option, most societies will choose to evolve very rapidly.